


with a whimper

by a beta perspective (Ejunkiet)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, F/M, INDEFINITE HIATUS, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Past Stiles Stilinski/Malia Tate, Really not as traumatic as it seems - this is an adventure story, Slow Build Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, With a dash of romance thrown in on the side, all human-nature and human error / inescapable feats of nature in this one, flu pandemic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-30
Updated: 2014-10-24
Packaged: 2018-02-11 02:58:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2050983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ejunkiet/pseuds/a%20beta%20perspective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the end came, it came choking on the blood within its lungs, fingers twisting uselessly in sweat-stained sheets and hospital blues.</p><p>The worst part was that it didn’t take everyone. It took just enough of them to make sure that the governments crumbled and civilisation as they knew it collapsed, leaving the survivors with nothing but their lives and the pain of losing almost everyone.</p><p>--</p><p><b>Part three:</b> Of course, after all the shit he's been through, it wouldn't be the virus that kills him; it would be the Wendigos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pandemic

**Author's Note:**

> This started off as an idea I wanted to flesh out about how this scenario would work out in this universe, and then it took on a life of its own.

_"It wasn’t hard, it was kind of simple." - Anymore, Frank Turner._

\--

At first, everyone got sick.

It had started out as an ordinary, if persistent, flu epidemic. A particularly virulent strain of flu had mutated into a new form that was highly communicable, and had taken only a few weeks to sweep through the population. Normal outbreak procedures were followed, and concerns for the vulnerable - infants, the elderly, the otherwise immunocompromised - were alleviated, orders sent out to open up new treatment centers, leading to the conversion of old government buildings and local rec centers. With the sheer volume of cases, special measures were taken to ease the load, and the government issued a statement that was broadcast nationwide: if you notice you are manifesting flu symptoms, you were recommended to stay at home and avoid contact with others.

It was a well-executed, practiced manoeuvre, and after the initial shock, the general public moved on. After all, it was not as if this outbreak was anything new; H5N1 had been present at endemic levels in areas of South East Asia for years, and had successfully been held back by vaccinations before. Life proceeded as normal, with work, school, family; and it went almost unnoticed when the people that got sick didn’t seem to be getting better.

It was shortly after the anniversary of the second month that the situation became impossible to ignore. The streets of most major American and European cities were empty, acting as desolate backdrops to the national news networks that reported from the steps of the White House. Their message of hope, of the government's next steps, had to be transcribed at the bottom of the screen, the voice of the reporter distorted by the plastic of the respirators that had become mandatory issue for those who weren't already sick. It didn't take long for those few reporters to disappear as well, replaced by text updates, and then nothing at all.

The roads cleared, the grocery stores steadily ran out of stock, but instead of the riot that had always been predicted in these scenarios in popular culture, there was just the silence, the stillness, that came when mostly everything came to a stop.

Not everyone got sick, but their numbers were so few that Stiles wasn't sure if immunity was actually a possibility, or little more than an urban myth. Others survived, but barely; helped by something within them that gave their immune system the boost it needed to beat the infection.  
  
Most, however, did not.  
  
By the end of the third month, the death toll was in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions -- but they had no way to check, not when the TV had stopped broadcasting reruns a fortnight ago, the internet providers had shut down, and the radio crackled with the same automatic message: 'please, stay calm and stay indoors until you're well. This will pass soon.' They were lucky they still had electricity; that most of the operations that ran the generators were closed-circuit, self-contained, automatic systems - although they couldn't be sure how long it'd last.  
  
There was no panic, no mass-hysteria when the rest of the population succumbed to the infection. The incubation period of the last few had been more drawn out, and subsequently, the duration of the infection longer; drawing the sick together, closer to their loved ones within their homes. Stiles' father had passed away at the end of the last month, quietly and with no fuss at all, in the room next to Stiles when he was sleeping, and from the expression on his face, Stiles could almost believe it had been peaceful. Melissa McCall had passed the next morning, and Scott and Stiles had spent the day in muted grief, curled up next to each other in a way they hadn't been since they were children, and hadn't been since.  
  
Stiles had been one of the last to get sick, and the only human within their small group to come out the other side. He didn't know for sure why he was one of the few that had recovered, but he had his theories: a trace of the spirit of the Nogitsune that had wrecked his life and nearly the lives of his friends junior year; the magic within him that Deaton had helped awaken; or his relationship to the packs of Beacon Hills, and what Malia had phrased as her mating bond before life had gotten in the way and kicked their relationship to the wayside. In the end, it didn't matter.  
  
In a matter of a few short months, the world as he had known it had disappeared. All that was left were his friends, his pack, and the other supernatural creatures that had managed to survive the infection.  
  
\---

"Stiles. If you want me to have any success with breaking through this encryption, you're going to have to give me _breathing room_."  
  
Lydia narrows a pointed glare at where Stiles hovers inches to her left , his fingers twitching at his sides, and okay -- he may be a bit close, but they were close, _so close_ to breaking through the security system of the pharmacy, and if he could just slip inside to grab a few bottles of Adderall, and painkillers, and antibiotics, and maybe some Gatorade--  
  
" _Stiles_."  
  
"Okay, okay, backing off. Sorry."  
  
Breaking into the military fort itself had been _easy_ \- but accessing the medical bay that contained all the drugs had been another matter. They'd been on the road for weeks, needing the space, the time away from Beacon hills and its memories of death, and so they'd followed the path of the Hale's years earlier and taken the clear roads south, towards the border.

There wasn't much else they could do. It had quickly become clear in the weeks following the reports of the first deaths that the government and their leaders had known this would happen - that there would be nothing that they could do to stop it - although whether this was because they had caught it too late, or created it, Stiles hadn't decided, and in the end, realised he didn't care. This was their reality now and they would - as they had time and time before - make the best of it.  
  
There was a series of angry beeps, before another loud sound of rejection as Lydia curses between her teeth, and Stiles stops himself from creeping back over to peer over her shoulder. Lydia has made it clear that his input is not appreciated -- and to be honest, he has no idea what he was doing with electric locks anyway, and neither does the Yukimura’s, or Scott. Malia had offered to punch through the wall, which was a nice gesture, but ultimately futile, if the reinforced windows were of any indication.  
  
 _This would be so much easier if Danny were still with them._

Stiles pauses, breath caught between his teeth as he traces the thought, the person. After a moment of careful breathing, he carefully collects the name – _Danny -_ and slips it behind a partition, one that's labelled 'coping', adjacent to another called 'survival'. This is where he places the things he won't think about -- can't think about -- until they are in a better place, and they have the freedom to mourn.  
  
They need to find the remains of the Hale pack, and Derek.  
  
Without the resources they had relied on in the advent of the era of communication, Derek is their one and only hope of surviving this. All Stiles has is one tracking spell, the one thing Deaton had managed to pass onto him before he had disappeared. Whether or not he was still alive, they had no way of knowing; not that it mattered much, seeing as he wasn’t _here_.  
  
The spell gave them a direction, a purpose, and it was the best - and only - plan they had at the moment.

\--

The spell had led them here: an abandoned military base on the Mexican border, a few dozen miles away from where they’d last seen any signs of the living, or any sort of civilisation. Their last confrontation with another pack – Aidan’s, actually, who had come back looking for Danny – had been a wrought, tense affair that they had managed to navigate by the skin of their teeth. They had learned a lot from that encounter: that Wolf packs had difficulty with cohabitation, and on the best times could barely tolerate each other’s existence, and that now with huge swathes of land up for grabs, it was lucky that they’d known one of them and were able to leave without the inevitable territory battle. Since then, they had been more careful, avoiding the highways wherever possible _._

There had been hints of others who had survived the infection, wolves and those who were definitely not, and Stiles often wondered how Jackson was doing in London; if the situation there would be any better than _this._ Considering the smells that had made the walk through the city nearly unbearable for the wolves amongst them, Stiles reckons they could have it worse.

In the face of Lydia's increasing frustration, and the growing impatience he can feel from the other room, gravitating from the more volatile members of Scott's pack - as he always _did_ pick the best individuals - Stiles bites the metaphorical bullet and tries again to get Lydia’s attention.

"Lydia.”

“No.”

She scrawls another line across the dirt-streaked pages of her notepad, and when Stiles catches a glimpse of words instead of the lists of numbers that she’d been working through just ten minutes earlier, he reaches for her, trying to lay his hand on her arm. She turns quickly, and he sees a glimmer of wet tracks tracing her cheeks before she slaps him away, the sharp points of her carefully maintained nails biting into his skin.

“If you take _one more_ step towards me, Stilinski, I swear to god-”

He takes the step anyway as she turns back to the door, slow and careful, almost expecting her to lash out at him, but she's too distracted to notice him. Her hands shake as she turns the ink from the notepad to the white-washed wall beside it, and he can hear her muttering something, but he can't quite catch it - the snippets he catches makes him wonder if she is even speaking _English._ After a minute or so of this, he decided to take a chance and tries to approach her again, stopping just outside of her line of sight.

It doesn’t take more than that to reach her and he goes for it – wrapping his arms around her as he lurches for the pen, trying to knock it from her grip.

_"Lydia!"_

He managed to get a grip on the damn thing, although it's a close one as she fights back, struggling against his grip. He's almost lost her when he finally manages to knock it from her grip, and she’s gasping, falling away from the wall with a cry that’s almost a sob. Her knees crumple beneath her, and Stiles catches her before she falls, breathing hard as she buries her face into the front of his jacket, fingers twisting into the seams, seeking out the embroidered logo of the Beacon Hills Sheriff’s department.

“ _Shit_. _Shit, shit, shit-_ ”

He wraps her up in his arms, tight, feeling her shake as her chests heaves against his chest. When the panic subsides and she’s breathing easier, then - _and only then -_ does Stiles turn his attention back to what she’s written on the wall.

The ink is smeared where Stiles grabbed the pen, and the faint lines are barely legible against the plaster, but it doesn’t take much for Stiles to make it out. Granted, the gratuitous repetition helped.

‘DEREK HALE. CORA HALE. PETER HALE. DEREK. CORA. PETER. DEREK CORA. PETE-‘

“Does this mean we’ve found them?”

He glances up to where Scott is standing in the open doorway, his eyes glued to the scrawl on the walls as if his stare alone could decipher the meaning, and for the first time Stiles notices that the ever present murmur of conversation in the other room has dropped off into silence.

“Not yet. But they're close.”

Lydia’s breaths are steadier, although she looks exhausted as she arches her head to catch Scott’s worried gaze over Stiles shoulder.

“It’s a warning. We need to find them. Quickly.”


	2. Road trips

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jeeze, have one near miss with a vehicle pileup - that had, for the record, appeared out of _nowhere_ \- and be judged for life.
> 
> (It was recent enough that he was lucky to be in the front seat - Lydia had made a point to banish him to the back for the last two weeks of driving.)

They don’t have many resources – hence the supply run – but they also don’t have many _members_ , so it doesn’t take them long to pack up their things and hit the road.

Lydia tries one more time to crack the combination for the medical supply room, then Malia sets to work thumping her fists into the metal– but after a few minutes of furious activity, the wall, windows and door remain standing as her knuckles drip blood onto the concrete. They don’t have time for this, not according to Lydia (who began a frantic pace shortly after Stiles let her go and hasn’t spoken since) and after raiding the base’s pantry and stocking up on fuel, they hit the road.

They have three cars in total: Scott and his pack in his mother’s people carrier; Stiles, Malia and Lydia in his jeep, and what’s left of the Yukimura’s in the small Honda, cushioned defensively in the middle of the moving train **.** They’d left Beacon Hills with just the surviving members of their group: Kira and her mother, Scott and his beta, Stiles, Malia, and Lydia. There is still room for more, from when they had first made the plans to leave Beacon Hills, but that was before both Stiles and his dad had gotten sick, and Melissa McCall’s body had rejected the bite.

The drive is not particularly comfortable: long, long hours within a stifling confined space, with too many bodies stuffed into too few cars, but it keeps them unobtrusive, allows them to pass as quietly as possible and not draw unwanted attention. Stiles and his beat up old jeep take the lead as they turn back onto the highway, Stiles buzzing in the driver’s seat and relying on highway signs with Lydia’s input for direction. The roads are clear, and Stiles takes to drumming his fingers against the steering wheel, trying to keep his mind on the road, and on the lookout, but it’s too quiet, and he can’t escape his thoughts for long. At least he’s awake, which is one blessing, as he doesn’t think they will be taking any time to stop. Normally they’d drive in shifts, but Lydia was still shaking from the incident earlier, curled into herself on the seat beside him, and Malia had never had the chance to learn, hadn’t wanted to until it was already too late.

They pass the first sign they’ve seen since they left the military base an hour ago, and Lydia’s breath hitches. He glances over to find her staring up from the map in her lap, eyes glued to the words that states that San Diego is hundred miles out – and he tightens his grip on the steering wheel, forcing his eyes back on the road.

“San Diego?”

“San Diego.”

Well, it sure as hell beats Mexico -- but it also means that Derek and Braeden are no longer across the border. Stiles feelings on that are mixed: he has bad, bad feelings about this, and although it’d been a year since they had almost lost half of the pack, almost lost Scott, almost lost _Derek_ , it is still too soon. He can't help the thin stream of dread that accompanies the thought of finding them, the same way he couldn’t step into the police station without a phantom pain in his stomach, and the surge of guilt for what happened there. It's the same way he can’t think of Beacon Hills without feeling the weight of his father’s hand, cold and limp in his own, the morning he’d found him. Tragedy seems to follow the Hale pack like a shadow, no matter where they are, or how few of them are left.

They also have no idea what they will find when they do catch up to them, or who they’d be dealing with. They hadn’t seen Derek in over a year, hadn’t heard from him since his last check-up, reporting his findings – or lack thereof – regarding the Desert Wolf, before the outbreak had really dug in its teeth and everything had gotten messy. Derek had mentioned seeing Cora, though, and months later, when Peter had escaped from the depths of Eichen House, they'd assumed he’d gone to join them.

Lydia’s message confirmed that, at least – but Stiles now wonders what happened to Braeden, if the constant exposure to wolves had helped her chances of surviving the infection, or if Stiles really was the only human member of their group that was left.

He hopes she’d made it. They could use her on their side, and her veritable warehouse of artillery wouldn't hurt either. Peter, though – Stiles had hoped that he'd have been gutted the moment he’d breached the territory of the Calaveras. Stiles had already resigned himself to the fact that he rarely got what he wanted; but even so, it was a nice dream.

He shifts to a higher gear, flinching briefly at the noise as the gears grind against each other, a horrible screech of metal that reverberates through the entire car. He doesn’t notice that he’s been speaking at all, muttering hushed encouragement to the engine through his teeth until Malia’s head pops through from the back, teeth bared in a snarl in the rear view mirror.

“Stiles. Do you want me to maul you?”

He offers a small, sheepish smile to her reflection. “Sorry. Old habits.” Keeping half an eye on the road, he reaches down between the seats, rifling around the gearstick until he finds what he’s looking for, pulling out the police-grade walkie-talkie. Lydia rolls her eyes at his small exclamation of victory, shifting in the seat to make herself more comfortable before holding out a hand.

“Hand it over, and keep your eyes on the road.”

Stiles rolls his eyes, obliging her as he bites his tongue to keep from grumbling. Jeeze, have _one_ near miss with a vehicle pileup - that had, for the record, appeared out of _nowhere_ \- and be judged for life.

(It was recent enough that he was lucky to be in the front seat - Lydia had made a point to banish him to the back for the last two weeks of driving.)

She fiddles with the frequency as Malia turns to face the other car, flashing her eyes at the Honda behind them. Stiles can see Kira pass on the signal in his periphery, and gives into the grin that threatens as a result as he turns back to the road. He’s still proud of himself for devising the method, finding a use for an otherwise pretty much useless ability.

The radio crackles, before Scott’s voice breaks through the noise.

“Can you read me? Is there an issue up front? Over.”

“Scott, we read you clear. Everything’s clear, this is more of an update.”

“Lydia.” The relief bleeds clear through his voice. “What is it?”

“We’ve got a heading. They’re in San Diego.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short update! This was needed to flesh out some plot points, and make relevant season four modifications. There's a good chance this story will be continued from here on out by two authors (myself and evilbunnyking) so I've upped the final chapter count. Keep an eye on this.


	3. hungry, hungry hippos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> San Diego, as it turns out, is crawling with Wendigos.

San Diego, as it turns out, is crawling with Wendigos.

Of course, it’s not like they had any idea of this before they made their way into the city. In fact, Stiles would say they’d remained pretty much oblivious right up until the moment the Jeep’s tires had burst, sending their train careening to a halt. Even with that forewarning, it wasn’t until after Stiles had gotten outof the car with an eye for surveying the damage and had heard Scott’s warning shout behind him, that it had ever crossed his mind that this could be a _trap._

After that initial collision – an explosion of force from behind him, hands reaching out to wrap tight around Stiles wrists and pin them to his sides - things had happened so quickly that the next few moments were really a blur, and Stiles can’t really recall much of what actually happened.

One minute, he’d been standing by the front of the car, trying to hypothesize a way that a jagged piece of iron could have wedged itself into the side of his tire on a perfectly clear stretch of highway; the next, there was a sharp point of contact against the back of his skull, shoving him forwards until he toppled face-first, his nose crunching against the pavement.

He doesn’t have much time to think about the pain, though, as the next moment brings a clawed hand on his shoulder, flipping him onto his back, before it wraps around one ankle and tears him away from the shelter of the jeep.

His sharp intake of breath is harsh as he blinks into the sunlight, but his head is reeling from too many impacts and he can't see shit. His lungs catch at every sharp prick of pain from the impact of every single rock and piece of grit in the road as he’s pulled further into the street, and it’s then that he realises that he’s being dragged away, from the cars, from his _friends_.  There is nothing he can do to stop it – his strength is nothing compared to the arms that are pulling him, his nails scratching ineffectively against the sheer surface of the highway, he can’t stop this, he can’t reach them-

There’s the sound of metal grating against rock, heavy and loud as something large clatters against the road’s surface, and Stiles thinks he can hear a howl, a scream of _‘Stiles!’_ before he falls through a hole in the street into a freezing, pungent smelling darkness.

Well, shit. 

_\--_

He doesn’t remember much of what happens after that. The hands that dragged him from the highway had disappeared when he’d dropped through the manhole and landed with a dull thud in the arms of someone else, and for a while he was horizontal, bent in half at the waist over a bony shoulder. His head swims, the pain throbbing with his heart beat and every time his captor’s momentum sends his nose swinging into a shoulder, and it doesn’t take long for Stiles to black out from the pain.

He returns to consciousness an indeterminate amount of time later not really feeling much better; although the pain from his nose has abated somewhat, the back of his head throbs, and it hurts to think, his thoughts hazy and thick as if his skull has been stuffed full of iron wool.

He has enough time to register the fact that he’s cold, the darkness around him impenetrable and freezing, before he’s hit by a wave of nausea, pitching forward and curling in on himself. He stays like that for a while, accompanied only by the harsh sound of his breathing, the frantic thudding of his pulse loud in his own ears, until the roiling of his stomach subsides.

Slowly, carefully, he lifts his head, ignoring the ache as he takes in his surroundings. Or tries to, at least.

The darkness hasn’t changed: even with time to adjust, he can’t make out anything of where he’s woken up. The air is stale and dank for the most part, and there’s a terrible stench coming from the corner beside him, but he’s too weak to move away from it. In the end, he has to settle with wrinkling his nose and twisting the rest of his body away, praying that it doesn’t get work.

He’s semi-vertical at least, his legs outstretched before him, propped back against what must be an exterior wall, the cold metal leaching the heat from the back of his shirt and neck, but when he reaches back to touch it, he finds that he can’t – and that’s when he notices his wrists are tied, and - ow, _fuck_ , they _hurt._

They’ve used some kind of rough material, the bindings so tight he can tell that circulation is going to become an issue _seriously_ soon, if it isn’t already. His feet, strangely, are unrestricted - but he puts that thought aside to be gnawed on later: he needs to deal with his circulation before he loses a couple fingers. Mulling over his scarce few options only takes a moment, and he brings his bound hands up to his face to nose against the bindings.

It’s a course material, the fibres rough against his skin, with a smell that reminds him of the old gym at the high school – and recognition comes to him alongside a flash of annoyance. They’ve tied him up with a length of dirty rope: it’s as if they were _trying_ to live up to the stereotype of a cliché villain.

(That would make Stiles a damsel in distress, which is not only offensive to women, but entirely _inaccurate_ : you don’t survive as many potentially lethal encounters as Stiles had without picking up a few tricks.)

Grimacing in disgust – he was just dragged through what he’d guess to be a _sewer_ , there’s no way this is going to be hygienic - he’s just set upon the material with his teeth when he hears the sound of footsteps slapping against hard, tacky floors, and a light begins to grow in the darkness, highlighting a crack along the floor of the imposing wall of black. A door frame.

Nothing about the situation is promising, and for maybe the first time in a long time, he feels a thread of panic. His options are limited here, and as much as it pains him to admit it, his situation doesn’t look good.

He has no idea what he’s up against. He doesn’t remember seeing a face, or any sort of distinguishing features that might give him an idea of what they’re dealing with. He is, quite literally, _in the dark_ , and all he can do is take a deep breath and work on slowing down his heart rate before they realise just how out of his element he is. He’s had years of practice with his werewolf best friend, at least, and a couple more with his werewolf girlfriend, and he likes to think he’s gotten a better grip on his tells, managing to restore at least a small part of his privacy.

He doesn’t think he’s dealing with weres, though; kidnapping stray humans just isn’t their MO. The fact that they’d _kidnapped_ him instead of killing him gives him the least bit of hope, but the reality is that he really doesn’t know what they want with him.

He’s awkwardly human, gangly by anyone’s standards, although he’s managed to put on a bit more lean muscle since his teens. It’s not like he has any rights to territory in this area, and this seems a bit far to go for a trespassing dispute.

The light seeping in from under the door brightens until it is light enough for him to identify some of the features of the room he’s in, the faint outline of a bulky object behind him that takes up half the room materialising into a ratty mattress and threadbare blanket. There’s a shadow of a drain set in the floor, and the awkward outline of what he can guess by the strength of the dank odour that lingers in the air to be a toilet in the corner.

It’s the bare minimum that he needs to survive, and it’s familiar in an odd way, as if he’s seen something like this before. It only takes him another second as the light gets brighter, and he sees the solid metal of the walls and door, before the facts click, and he realises: he’s in a prison cell.

The footsteps stop, and there’s a ringing clang of metal against metal, loud in the tiny room.

A small window opens in the door right across from him.

The eyes that stare into the room are glazed and tired, underscored by deep bruising; but the irises are a pale, milky white, thick cataracts that have grown to such an extent that they’ve absorbed the pupils, and Stiles realises that he recognises these descriptions from a verbal retelling – and late-night sleuthing with the hospital morgue – from an incident during the time they were dealing with the dead pool.

Wendigos. Mother fucking _wendigos._

(He remembers, vividly, what the last pack of wendigos in Beacon Hills had left behind: the store of bodies – _victims_ – they’d found in their underground cool room had kept the Sheriff’s office busy for months, and that’s not even broaching upon the freezer filled with parts they'd found later.)

Stiles watches with his tongue between his teeth as the wendigo takes stock of the room before it finds him. It leans forward, sniffing through the small window, before it lets out a long hiss of breath and flickers away from view.

“This is – impossible. How did you – we thought there weren’t any left?”

“He just came into town with a new pack of wolves. Plates say California. Maybe it didn’t affect them as much over there.”

There’s a muted hum of agreement, and Stiles has to squash the ridiculous urge to _laugh_ , as widely inappropriate as it would be, at the thought. Calm. He had to remain calm.

“Maybe we can find more. With this one, though,” there’s a flicker of movement in Stiles’ line of sight, a gesture that casts a shadow across the beam of light, “we cannot wait. When the others return from the hunt, we will break him open. He’s skinny, but if we’re careful, the marrow should be able to last us through winter.”

With that, the little metal door swings shut with loud, echoing clang that sends Stiles’ startling backwards, crashing to the floor in a clumsy pile of knees and elbows.

He doesn’t bother picking himself up, eyes stuck on the opposite wall as the sound of footsteps fade away. He’s shaking with be a combination of stress and fatigue, and all he can do is watch the lines of his cell fade away with the light, dropping him back into darkness.

Of course, after all the shit he’s been through, it wouldn’t be the virus that kills him: it’d be the wendigos. Very, very _hungry_ wendigos.

\--

The next few hours are suffocating.

There’s no light, no further sounds of movement or conversation, nothing to distract Stiles from the draw of time, steadily winding forward towards the inevitable moment of the wendigo’s return. Stiles’ renewed attempts to attack the bindings at his wrists has had little success, but while he’s prepared to try to physically fight the wendigos when they return -kicking and screaming like the best of them - he’s under no illusions about his chances. From what Stiles had seen of them, the wendigo’s are half-starved, thin to the point of wan, and if this were a matter of survival for an entire _pack_ , his life seems insignificant in comparison. He can’t say he really blames them.

That doesn’t mean he’s giving up, not by any stretch of the imagination. If there’s anything that Stilinski’s are good at, it’s going down fighting, and Stiles would make his father proud, even if he would end up seeing them a little sooner than the Sheriff would have liked. Still, you couldn’t win every battle. At least Stiles would have had a few more months than the average human.

There’s a clatter of sound, just off into the distance, and it’s not long until Stiles can make out the steady rhythm of steps. These seem faster though, in a hurry, and Stiles has just enough time to brace himself, positioning his body at the side of the wall where the door opens, prepared to do anything, _everything_ to try to help him get out of this alive, when the steps reach their destination. There’s another grinding of metal, and the clunk of something heavy hitting the floor, before the door opens, a softer light flooding in. The light illuminates the man’s profile and Stiles pauses mid-lurch, hands curled into a fist and halfway off the floor.

Holy shit.

_“Derek?”_

There’s a hand surging down to meet him, wrapping firmly around Stiles bicep as he’s pulled to his feet, the faint outline of beta-blue irises reflecting the light as Derek glances him over. He’s dressed in only a pair of tattered shorts, blood streaked across his chest and arms, his hands an even, easy pressure as they pass along his chest, shoulders, back, seemingly checking him for injury, careful to avoid any bruises when they make contact. 

It takes a few more minutes of careful searching before Derek finally deems him acceptable and releases him. The light from the small torch he's been carrying flickers across his features, warped into the distinctive morph of his beta form, before he thumbs it off, grabbing Stiles hand and dragging him bodily towards the door.

“Keep quiet, walk fast. We don’t have much time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick disclaimer: I'm about to go on a weekend trip abroad, and I've had big news about possibly moving overseas, so I haven't really had a chance to give this the read-over it deserves, so I apologise for any glaring errors/mistakes, I own them entirely.

**Author's Note:**

> toss around ideas / head!canons with me at my [tumblr](abetaperspective.tumblr.com)!


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